


Relics and Memories

by last_illusions (injured_eternity)



Category: CSI: NY
Genre: Episode Tag, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-11-14
Updated: 2008-11-14
Packaged: 2017-10-17 09:25:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,236
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/175352
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/injured_eternity/pseuds/last_illusions
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They're just memories. Memories fade; they stop hurting--they stop being ghosts. And just like that, their harmony was restored. Somewhat angsty Mac/Stella fluff, post-ep.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Relics and Memories

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers: 5x05 [“Cost of Living”]; 2x21 [“All Access”]; some general season spoilers

When the elevator doors closed, Stella Bonasera pulled her phone out, hit her first speed dial, and prayed for all her tentative Catholicism was worth. True to form, her boss picked up on the first ring.

“Stella?”

He sounded confused, but she didn’t have time to elaborate.

“Can you meet me at the Greek embassy?”

“Of course. I’ll be there in ten.”

 _Bless you_ , Mac, she thought silently as she clipped the phone back to her belt—dissonant though their friendship may have been off and on since long before he’d started dating Peyton Driscoll the previous year, he’d never failed her, and she liked to believe she’d never failed him. When the doors opened on the first floor, no one without access to security footage would have ever known she’d made the call, and her practised gaze scanned the lobby quickly: two security guards at the main doors, the receptionist, and another guard at each of the side doors. Though she could have used another civilian or two, she made do, approaching the guards at the door with a shy smile, playing the part of the nervous female.

“Do you mind if I wait for my ride in here? I’ll only be a few minutes.”

The older of the two merely nodded, but the younger one grinned, responding to her Greek in kind. “Cold?”

She allowed herself a low, sheepish laugh. “The transition always gets me,” she admitted ruefully. “I don’t care if it’s negative twenty as long as it’s consistent!”

Both men chuckled appreciatively (or was it in commiseration?) before the younger one, whose nametag read “Damian”, spoke again. “How long have you been a police officer?”

Careful enough to not tell him she’d been a police officer before becoming a CSI, she provided the usual correction of “Crime scene investigator, actually, for about thirteen years now.”

“It treats you well?”

“I’m still here, aren’t I?”

“Point,” he conceded.

By the time the ten minutes passed, she’d exhausted more small talk than she’d had to use since the last department banquet and knew that while Damian was unmarried and relatively new to the embassy, the older officer, Alex, had been married for fifteen years, had three children, and was approaching his fifth year there. The appraiser was just stepping out of the elevator and coming toward her when Mac pulled up to the curb, and she gratefully bid goodnight to the two guards and threw herself into the car as gracefully and inconspicuously as possible.

The expression on Mac’s face was worried at best, and he didn’t bother putting the car into drive right away. “Are you okay?”

Slowly, she nodded. “That man in the doorway—the one wearing the suit.”

With his face half-hidden by the shadows of darkness, Mac could afford the look up to the man she referenced before he returned her nod. “What about him?”

“He’s the one who attacked me.”

Almost immediately, he had his hand on his gun and was moving to get out of the car, but she stopped him with a sharp, “No!” He swung around to face her, a mix of rage and confusion flitting across his face, and she continued, “I have absolutely nothing to go on, Mac. Please—let’s just get out of here.”

For a long minute, he just stared at her, but perhaps the pleading in her eyes convinced him, because he settled back into the driver’s seat and put the car in gear. “Talk,” he ordered, albeit gently, once they were moving again.

She fumbled for the bottle of water in the cupholder instead. “Can I steal this?”

“You can _have_ that, Stel. What the hell happened?”

Holding up a finger to tell him to wait, she swallowed half the bottle first, then sighed, rubbing her temples. “I went to have the coin appraised,” she began. “I figured the Greek government would want it back if it was the real thing, so I set up an appointment earlier.”

“Why didn’t you take backup?” he broke in before she could continue, and she couldn’t help the amused smile that played at her lips.

“It was the embassy, Mac,” she pointed out drily. “It’s not like anything in the evidence had led us there.” Grudgingly, he conceded the point, and she continued, “The man I was talking to called in the appraiser, but something about his voice kept grating at me. It wasn’t until I was about to pull the folder out that I realised he sounded exactly like the man who attacked me, so I played clueless—told them I’d brought the wrong sample and I’d have to come back later.”

“You should have let me arrest him.”

“With what? My gut? I’m pretty sure the judge wouldn’t accept that as evidence for a warrant,” she countered. “It’s not like I have a recording to sample his voice against.”

She spared a glance at her boss, whose lips were pressed into a tight line. “Mac,” she began, but he shook his head.

“You’re not staying alone tonight.”

Her brows shot into her hairline. “Mac?”

“We have no way of knowing he doesn’t have your address. I’m not letting him have access to you again.”

“Mac, I’ll be fine.”

He took his eyes off the road long enough to meet hers. “You’re the one who said you thought you’d be carried out in a body bag. He doesn’t get that chance again.”

All she had to do was open her mouth to argue before he turned to glare at her again, and she heaved a sigh and threw up her hands. “You’re like a guard dog, you know that?”

He huffed out a half-laugh. “I’ve been called worse. So would you let me do my job already?”

Resisting the urge to simply stick her tongue out at him, she settled for rolling her eyes instead. “You’re hardly getting paid to be my protection detail.”

“No, I’m paid to look after the lab, and you out of commission means more work for everyone else.” Turning sharp blue eyes on her, he added wryly, “I don’t, of course, care at all that someone who likely has diplomatic immunity right now _wants_ you out of commission.”

She couldn’t help the responding laugh, though she tried. It was really just useless to argue with him when he was in this sort of mood. “Of course not.”

Besides, though she would never admit it to him, she appreciated the concern. And though she would never admit it to _herself_ , either, she would be grateful for company. No matter how annoying he could be when he insisted on being her bodyguard, it was a pleasant reminder of how he’d been when she’d first met him, long before he’d lost Claire. So she let him drive, ignoring the rather satisfied smile playing at his lips—he might have been entitled, but she certainly wasn’t going to be the one to let his head get any bigger!

( _Relics & Memories_)

They reached her apartment complex, and she was almost impressed he'd remembered where it was, since she didn't think he'd been there since just after she'd settled in. She didn’t, however, bother to comment, but when he pulled a small duffel from his trunk, she couldn't help rolling her eyes again and muttering something about Boy Scouts she didn't think he heard.

“Nope. Just the Marines.”

She chuckled, keying them into the building instead of responding and answering his questioning look with “Five” when the elevator doors slid open before she got there. When they stepped onto her floor, he moved in front of her, insisting she walk behind him so he could cover her. She sighed, hating the feeling of once again being a target, of not being enough to provide her own self-defence, and he let her have the token protest of his name before he held his hand out for her keys.

Shaking her head in exasperation, she handed them to him, eyeing the lock as she did. There were none of the telltale signs of forced entry, and the urge to call him paranoid was placing the words on the tip of her tongue, but she placed her hand on her gun and followed him in nonetheless.

“You’re clear,” he told her after a minute, coming back into the foyer, and she silently refused to acknowledge the fear that had been sitting in her stomach until he said that.

“I could have told you as much,” she teased him instead, receiving a mock glare in answer, and she shot a cheeky grin back at him as she moved to drop her purse in the kitchen and her bag in the converted office.

Hanging her light coat in the closet and holding a hand out for his suit jacket, she glanced awkwardly over her shoulder, almost immediately regretting the angle. “Can I get you anything? Drinks? Dinner, for that matter?”

It was Mac’s turn to roll his eyes. “You don’t have to treat me like a guest, Stel,” came his mild reminder. “I will, however, steal your shower if you don’t mind.”

“Good luck getting the whole damn thing back to your place.”

“Thanks,” he answered wryly.

“Anytime.” Kicking off her shoes, she continued, “No, go ahead. You eat anything today?”

“Had lunch…” At her raised eyebrow, he sighed, admitting, “And I was about to make dinner when you called.”

Wincing, she turned into the kitchen. “Then while you shower, I think I’m going to make an attempt to remedy that.”

“You don’t—”

“Have to, I know,” she interrupted. “I’m going to anyway. Now shoo.”

He held up his hands in mock surrender. “All right, all right, I’m going!”

With a low laugh, she turned to the kitchen, opting for quick and filling instead of fancy. By the time he came out, hair still damp but at least feeling relatively more human than he had been, dinner was on the table, but Stella was nowhere in sight. Trying to ignore the stab of fear that ran through him, he reached for his gun, stepping silently into the hall in an attempt to get a better vantage point. Then he came around the corner, gun-first into the living room, and couldn’t quite suppress the sigh of relief at seeing her standing at the window, though the fact that she never noticed him was cause for worry in and of itself. He holstered the Glock, then stepped up quietly behind her, and a gentle hand on her shoulder pulled her from her reverie.

“You okay?” he asked softly, not wanting to disturb either the silence or her mood, and she turned slowly to face him, green eyes haunted.

She had her arms wrapped around herself like she was afraid she’d break into little pieces if she let go, and he brought his free hand up to her other shoulder, squaring himself off with her.

“Stel?”

“Yeah, Mac,” she said finally, which wasn’t really an answer, but at least it was a response. “I—I’m okay, I think. Just… just bad memories.”

The sudden mood change worried him, and the hesitation before he spoke was apparent, but so unfocussed was she that she never noticed. “Frankie?”

It was her turn to hesitate, but then, slowly, she nodded. “I hate being a victim, Mac,” she admitted, so softly he had to strain to hear her. “I can usually hold my own. I’m never prepared for that to change.”

“It never has.”

Her head shot up so fast he wondered if she’d feel the whiplash later. Green eyes were wide with… he didn’t have a name for it—confusion? hope? desperation?—but he pulled her away from the window to the sofa, both to give them a chance to sit and to keep them both from standing like targets silhouetted against the backlight.

“It never has,” he repeated. "You’ve always held your own—against Frankie, against… whoever this analyst is, and I swear to you we will find him—because it’s _you_.”

Her laugh was harsh and bitter, startling him with its complete lack of resonance with the Stella he knew. “I’m _alive_. That doesn’t mean I’m whole.” The words were as bitter as her laugh, and he kicked himself mentally, wondering how on earth he could have missed this. She was the closest thing to a best friend he had, and yet he hadn’t noticed how badly she was still hurting

“Yes, you _are_ alive, Stella, and God help me if I lost you, I’d hunt down the bastard responsible myself. Shooting him would be mercy.”

Her eyes were wary, confused, hopeful—Mac Taylor didn’t just say things like that, and it got her attention. At least now he could name the emotions flitting across her face, which beat the amalgamation of unidentifiable questions from before.

“No one leaves a confrontation untouched,” he continued quietly. “The strong person is the one who heals, even slowly.”

A tiny smile flitted across her face, crinkling the corners of her eyes. “You stole my words,” she accused just as softly.

“Only because they work,” he pointed out. Reaching toward her, he tipped her chin up, making her look at him. “You may not be whole right now, Stel, but you’re not broken.”

For a long moment, she just stared at him, searching his eyes for… something. He didn’t know if she found it and probably never would, but her shoulders relaxed and she reached for him, pulling him into a hug. He hugged her back (it was the only logical reaction he could come up with), resting his cheek against her hair and perfectly happy to stay there for as long as she wanted.

“At least Frankie didn’t speak Greek,” she mumbled into his neck after a minute, and he laughed softly, grateful she was in a place to be joking about it again, wry though she may have been.

“Thank the Lord for small favours.”

She responded with a laugh of her own, then suddenly shot upright, almost clipping him in the jaw with the top of her head. “Oh, my God, dinner! I’m sorry, Mac, I—”

Covering her mouth with his hand, he effectively cut her off. “Stella?” She looked over at him, eyes puzzled, and he grinned, once again stealing her line: “Shut up.” He pulled his hand away, stood, and offered it to her. “Don’t worry about dinner.”

The smile she sent his way was sheepish, but at least it was still a genuine smile, and she reached out to hug him again.

“Thank you.”

“Always, Stel—always.”

She pulled back then, leading the way into the kitchen, and pulled a plate off the table to stick in the microwave.

“Mac?”

He looked over at her from where he’d paused to examine the painting she’d hung on the wall. “Stella?”

Hesitation; then, “You’re not broken either, you know.”

Silence fell on the room, broken only by the whirring of the microwave, and she hauled the door open before it could beep at her. She didn’t look at him, almost worried she’d crossed the unspoken lines that seemed to have been drawn between them in the past few years, and put the other plate in, busying herself. She was almost too effective at that, because when his answer came she nearly missed it.

“Not anymore.” The breath he drew in was audible, and she shifted, bracing her hip against the stove so she could face him. “Thanks in large part to you.”

Fighting the urge to raise her eyebrows, she smiled instead. “You weren’t exactly useless in the process yourself,” she pointed out, gesturing him toward the table.

Rather than obey, he moved instead to the cabinets, pulling out glasses. “I wasn’t exactly preemptive, either,” he countered. “Drink?”

“Water. And you’d be Superman if you had been.”

He shook his head, reaching into the freezer for ice. “Nah. The tights would look wrong.”

She choked—probably on air—and a glass of water appeared in front of her. Taking it gratefully, she swallowed fully half of it before she could speak normally again. “Thanks,” she wheezed after a minute, and he grinned.

“Found that hard to swallow?”

“Ha. Funny, Mac.”

Chuckling, he took the glass from her, refilling it and setting both down on the table before returning for the plate she’d left on top of the stove. They moved around one another like clockwork, in the comfortable silence that falls between two people who know one another well enough to anticipate one another’s moves, to communicate without words. Not until they were both seated did he once again move to break that silence.

“It’s true, you know.” She looked up from her plate, eyes confused, and he continued, “I don’t thank you enough for keeping me sane.”

“You don’t have to,” she pointed out. “I’m your friend—you really think I’m going to stand back and _watch_ you go totally crazy?”

“Not really, no, but that doesn’t preclude my needing to thank you.” She hid a smile, and he frowned. “What?”

Chuckling now, she shook her head. “Only you, Mac, would use the word ‘preclude’ at—” She paused to find a clock. “—two in the morning.”

“And only you, Stella, would call me on it.”

“Guilty as charged.”

With a wry nod, he set his fork down, looking her in the eye. “But really, Stel, thank you.”

Accepting that for what it was, she dipped her head in an abbreviated bow. “You’re welcome. Thank _you_ —I wouldn’t be functional either without you.”

His gaze drifted slowly to his left hand, palm down on the table, and back up to her. “They’re just memories,” he said evenly, perhaps as much to himself as to her, and stood, coming around to stand behind her as she did to him so often. “Memories fade; they stop hurting,” he added, hands on her shoulders, and she reached up, covering his left with her right and only slightly surprised when he turned it to return her grip, threading his fingers through hers.

“They stop being ghosts,” she amended his statement softly, and she twisted slightly to face him, unwilling to break the contact she’d missed so much but wanting him to understand the double meaning.

They locked gazes, emerald on sapphire, and slowly, he nodded. Then he was leaning a little closer, and she couldn’t have broken eye contact if she wanted to—she _didn’t_ want to, because keeping it told him yes, because it was Mac, because she trusted him with her life, and he didn’t need permission. When his lips touched hers, she wondered, for the briefest millisecond, where they were going, and then she stopped thinking about it, because it was Mac kissing her and it felt so damn natural she couldn’t think of a single reason to do anything but enjoy it. So she kissed him back, opening herself to him and squeezing his fingers gently. When they finally came up for air, he smiled at her like they’d been doing that for years, then dropped another kiss on the end of her nose.

“They do.”

And suddenly the dissonance wasn’t there anymore—their harmony had been restored. Or perhaps the better explanation was that it had never been destroyed, only temporarily voided, and when he sat back down across from her, their fingers were still interlaced.

  
 _Finis._

 _Feedback is always appreciated._

**Author's Note:**

> Notes: I started writing this piece right after I watched "Cost of Living", intending to write a casefic with the embassy characters. Then I figured the writers would have to address it at some point, so I took the lazy route and moved for a friendship sort of one-shot. I didn't have time to finish it before I saw "Enough", and then plot bunnies ran away with me, as many of you have probably noticed. This originally ended much differently; then I wrote "More than Enough" and my mindset about Mac and Stella got a little switched around. Ergo, this ending was born: I wanted to play around with the one I wrote for [_More than Enough_](http://archiveofourown.org/works/175350), avoiding the wry and trying for a little more immediacy. If you'd like to tell me whether or not I succeeded, I shall not complain. ;)
> 
> This is in no way related to _More than Enough_ : it is not a sequel, a prequel, or anything of the sort. If, however, you would like to take this ending and really apply to "Cost of Living", perhaps this is why Mac asked her to dinner so casually at the close of "Enough". Should that be the case, however, perhaps their evening after dinner was a little more involved than we think! :D


End file.
